


Words

by Ferith12



Category: DCU
Genre: Angst, Bruce Fails at Parenting, Bullying, But Everyone Has Their Limits, Dick's Great at Dealing wit Bullying, Doubt, Father-Son Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 14:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6661927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a while words have a way of getting under your skin, so that you believe in them, even if you never once doubted they were lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words

Dick Grayson wasn’t the sort to care much about being bullied.  
He was cheerful, he bounced back, he had a strong sense of his own self worth that no one could take away from him.  
So when he was eight and starting to go to school, it didn’t phase him at all when kids called him a gypsy circus brat, or charity case, or freak. Because what did what they thought matter? He was proud to be a gypsy circus kid, he wasn’t Bruce’s charity case, and he’d definitely rather be an awesome freak than a “normal” bratty rich kid. He was bullied, and he laughed at the pathetic kids trying to boost their own egos by stomping on him. He was a bird after all, they couldn’t bring him down.

It went on and on, though. The teasing, the words telling him, “You’re not loved” “You’re worthless” “You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being.” He knew they were wrong. He could still remember how his mother held him in her arms, and whispered, “I love you, my little Robin,” every night. He could still remember his father teaching him trapeze and smiling warm and bright and proud as he told him he was amazing.  
He knew that Bruce loved him, too, or at least that he cared a great deal for him. He knew that Bruce was proud of him. He _knew_ Bruce, he could understand the words he never spoke.

But… words have power. They have a way of seeping into you, getting under your skin without you noticing. They invade your psyche, making you believe in them, even if you never doubted they were lies. Words are the language of the heart, and it doesn’t matter what objections the mind makes if they poison it.  
And by the time he was sixteen Dick had been spent the last half of his life being told over and over that he was worthless, unwanted, a freak. And in all that time, not once had he been explicitly told he was loved.  
So it didn’t matter that he loved Bruce, that he cared about him and knew, _knew_  deep down that Bruce cared back. It didn’t matter that he truly, honestly, couldn’t care less about what the kids at the snobby rich person school said about him. But he couldn’t stop his ears from hearing, and after eight years, is it any wonder that he, even Dick Grayson, started believing?

It wasn’t so much that he thought he was worthless. It was just a sort of… itching under his skin. A feeling of… unsureness. Was he good enough? Was he good enough for Bruce?  
He was sixteen and unseen by himself and everyone else, his soul was full of doubt. He was fragile. And being fragile for him meant fighting back, and fighting for freedom.  
He couldn’t say that all his fights with Bruce were because of the words that had conditioned him to feel like less. They wouldn’t still be incapable of staying in the same vicinity long term without blowing up at each other if all their problems stemmed from issues Dick had mostly left behind him years ago. No, part of it was that he was, quite naturally, growing up, and Bruce didn’t handle that idea well. But the thoughts that swirled, poisonous, through Dick’s subconscious, definitely played a part. They made him act out, push at Bruce’s boundaries; he was asking, “am I worth putting up with?” “Am I really only here because I’m useful?” “ _Do you love me_?”.

Then Bruce fired him. He _fired_ him. He fired _Robin_. Like the woman who gave Dick that name, who had told him “I love you,” so often, like all that didn’t even matter.  
That crushed him.


End file.
